My students have a Unit 3 Test on Statistics this Friday, so I decided to host a review session for my students. Many could not make it because they had prior after school commitments, so I promised to record the session and post it to YouTube for my students to watch at a later time. I decided to use the Swivl I received as a part of Project Cam Opener to record my presentation. For those of you not familiar with Swivl, it is a rotating device that comes with a microphone. You can hook up your iPad to record and wear the microphone on your person. The device will then allow you iPad to record you while it tracks you around the room. While I have used it to record myself giving professional presentations or teaching, I had not used it yet to capture a video intended for students. Below is my resulting video and my process.

First, I hooked up the Swivl and made sure all of the equipment was working. Once everything seemed in order, I pressed record while using the Swivl Capture app. At the end of the session, I stopped the recording and uploaded the video to my Swivl Cloud account. Once I uploaded the video to my Swivl Cloud account, I went to my Swivl account on my computer and exported the video to my YouTube Channel. I was sure to export the document I used for review to my Google Account and made a public link to the document so students could access it from home. Finally, to get the video to students, I sent out the link using Remind. Overall, the process probably took me about 15 minutes at most.

If I were giving advice to teachers attempting this same approach, I would recommend checking your lighting first. I tried to do most of my work on the Promethean board at first and it was clear that the camera was not going to capture the screen. As a result, I started doing more of the problems on my chalkboard (yes, I have a chalkboard) and the camera seemed to capture it better. I think it was also very important that I kept the camera on me and I made sure the students were not visible in the video. This is important for both privacy issues and to ensure students stay focused during the review session. Overall, I am glad that I was able to use my technology to provide an additional resource for students. Once I get feedback from my students, I hope to continue providing this resource and provide resources for my students that allow them to be successful.

How do you provide review resources to your students using technology? Have a question? Please feel free to leave a comment below!